Following the Paris bombings last November, Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayyid Ali Khamenei posted an open letter on his website, addressed to ‘the Youth of the West’. Titled ‘Today terrorism is our common worry’, this letter was an urgent appeal to that youth, in whom Khamenei sees the hope for a different future from the one promised by the West’s current policies. Sympathising with the pain felt by all those affected by the terrorist attack in Paris, he nevertheless puts it in perspective with that suffered for so long by the people in the Middle East, as a result of Western intrusion and attacks.

While Sayyid Ali Khamenei’s letter is addressed to ‘Western youth’ – which is predominantly non-Muslim – its advice and viewpoint are clearly aimed also at Muslim communities in France and elsewhere. It is however obviously also targeted at Western powers and the whole range of commentators and institutions who share responsibility for the West’s aggressive policies towards the Islamic world.

It would be hard to improve on Khamenei’s actual words of wisdom, so this is a good start:

“It is correct that today terrorism is our common worry. However, it is necessary for you to know that the insecurity and strain that you experienced during the recent events, differ from the pain that the people of Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan have been experiencing for many years, in two significant ways. First, the Islamic world has been the victim of terror and brutality to a larger extent territorially, to greater amount quantitatively and for a longer period in terms of time. Second, that unfortunately this violence has been supported by certain great powers through various methods and effective means.

Today, there are very few people who are uninformed about the role of the United States of America in creating, nurturing and arming al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their inauspicious successors. Besides this direct support, the overt and well-known supporters of takfiri terrorism- despite having the most backward political systems- are standing arrayed as allies of the west while the most pioneering, brightest and most dynamic democrats in the region are suppressed mercilessly.”

But it’s important to first put the whole subject into context so that these words won’t once again fall on deaf ears. That ‘context’ is in the history of Iran’s relationship with the West over the last 65 years, though it must suffice to consider the most recent changes around the so-called Nuclear Deal.

‘So-called’ – because this was never really about Iran’s nuclear program, and certainly not about its non-existent nuclear weapons program, even though this was constantly presented in the West as a significant threat. Even the IAEA and US bodies monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities had concluded that some preliminary moves towards a weapons program had been abandoned in 2003, since when Iran’s stated aims to enrich Uranium for reactor fuel and supply medical and industrial isotopes had evidently been genuine.

What is more, Ayatollah Khamenei had repeatedly called for the banning of nuclear weapons, and declared that such devices go entirely against the principles of Islam and the aspirations of everyone for a safe and peaceful world.

While it may be hard to accept that the whole circus of the last ten years around ‘Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program’ was entirely contrived, and driven by the remorseless hostility of certain states toward Iran, this is the reality, and we can consequently pass judgement on the legitimacy of those states and their right to participate in international affairs.

We need hardly mince words about which ‘states’ we are referring to – Khamenei himself certainly doesn’t hesitate to identify Israel and Israel’s key backer the United States as the prime source of aggression and destabilisation toward Iran and other countries in the region. While Iran’s previous President, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad never tired of haranguing the West and Israel over the persecution of Palestinians, Western leaders and their puppet media did a great hatchet job on this man who wouldn’t wear a tie, or shut up. Even though he got to have his say in the very public forum of the UNGA, where it provoked a traditional walk-out from Israel’s many allies, what he actually said rarely got any attention.

Thanks to the power of the US media – which in this case we can rightly call ‘the Western Zionist media’, most people in the West believed not just that Iran wanted to ‘wipe Israel off the map’, but was actually planning to do so, with a single nuclear tipped missile. President Ahmedinejad didn’t actually ever say this of course, but rather presented the distinctly unpalatable idea that Israel wanted to wipe Palestine off the map, and was busy doing so. This idea wasn’t just unpalatable, but the truth of it was hard to conceal – except perhaps by distraction; we could look at the claims about Iran’s nuclear weapons program in this light, and see just how effective they have been.

We can go further though – and consider that the essential reason for Israel’s persistent belligerence towards Iran is primarily because of Iran’s unshakeable support for Palestinian rights. While Iran is clearly antagonistic to the Zionist state and its US ally, as illegitimate invaders of the Islamic world, it also sees the ongoing persecution of the Palestinians as an affront to humanity, and the prime cause of destabilisation of the whole region. This is an argument difficult to counter, and with many unheeded UN resolutions behind it might also be impossible for Israel to win in a fair court of opinion.

Sayyid Ali Khamenei is a much respected, even venerated figure in Iran today, and for good reason. Western media mutter darkly about ‘the mullahs’ who suppress the little fires of dissent and clamp down on ‘democratic reformers’ – as indeed they are muttering at the moment with new Iranian parliamentary elections taking place. But those media rarely criticise Ayatollah Khamenei directly, despite his expressing equally ‘controversial’ views to those of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Rather they just ignore him, though not necessarily simply because he is Iranian; Pope Francis has expressed very similar views to Khamenei on Palestine as well as on the degeneration of morality and values in Western capitalist societies.

In Khamenei’s view, it is this ‘moral degeneration’ in Western culture which is the breeding ground for the delinquent terrorism now plaguing the world. He writes:

“Dear youth! I have the hope that you- now or in the future- can change this mentality corrupted by duplicity, a mentality whose highest skill is hiding long-term goals and adorning malevolent objectives. In my opinion, the first step in creating security and peace is reforming this violence-breeding mentality. As long as double-standards dominate western policies, as long as terrorism- in the view of its powerful supporters- is divided into “good” and “bad” types, and as long as governmental interests are given precedence over human values and ethics, the roots of violence should not be searched for in other places.”

These views, about the West’s hypocrisy and double standards on who counts as a terrorist or as a ‘freedom fighter’ are barely controversial, at least to Westerners sceptical of their governments’ honesty. But the mention of ‘moral degeneration’ is more problematic for a culture that sees itself as ‘liberated’ and ‘progressive’. Khamenei continues in this vein:

“Unfortunately, these roots have taken hold in the depths of western cultural policies over the course of many years and they have caused a soft and silent invasion. Many countries of the world take pride in their local and national cultures, cultures which through development and regeneration have soundly nurtured human societies for centuries. The Islamic world is not an exception to this. However in the current era, the western world with the use of advanced tools is insisting on the cloning and replication of its culture on a global scale. I consider the imposition of western culture upon other peoples and the trivialization of independent cultures as a form of silent violence and extreme harmfulness.”

And on this threatening Western culture –

“Humiliating rich cultures and insulting the most honoured parts of these, is occurring while the alternative culture being offered in no way has any qualification for being a replacement. For example, the two elements of “aggression” and “moral promiscuity” which unfortunately have become the main elements of western culture, have even degraded the position and acceptability of its source region.

So now the question is: are we “sinners” for not wanting an aggressive, vulgar and fatuous culture? Are we to be blamed for blocking the flood of impropriety that is directed towards our youth..?”

In Khamenei’s view, the blending of this aggressive and degenerate Western culture with the cultures of the Islamic world lies at the root of barbaric terrorist movements like Da’esh.

For so many in the West, long immersed in a culture increasingly dominated by America, Khamenei’s viewpoint looks ‘reactionary’ or repressive. But consider this – why have the apocalyptic propaganda videos of Da’esh been described as ‘looking like Hollywood productions’? Is it not that they also seem to share ‘Hollywood values’?

Hollywood may just be a film fantasy world, but what is wrong with a culture that sees such horrific fantasies – which strive to be ultra-realistic and appeal emotively to the most primitive instincts – as the pinnacle of their ‘artistic’ achievement, as well as a great money earner?

How long can we also maintain that the consumption of such a diet of ‘war-porn’ has no effect on our youth, and bears no relation to the endless violence and mass-shootings that plague American society? Is this not what Khamenei fears may infect the young minds to which he appeals?

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